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Monday, January 18, 2010

TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG, THAT IS THE QUESTION

by Gina Sestak

We working stiffs have been having email discussions about ways in which to modify our posts. Suggestions include contests, flash fiction competitions, theme-of-the-month. I'm not going to ask what anybody thinks about those ideas, though. Somebody already tried that. Today I'm just going to free-form post like I always do, so fasten your seatbelts - here we go.

For the first few years of my participation in Working Stiffs, I wrote about the many jobs I've held. I don't think I've ever properly introduced myself, though. For the record, my name is Regina Marie Germaine Sestak. This is what I look like:

I was born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, in a hospital that no longer exists. My family lived in Detroit for awhile when I was a baby, then we moved back to Pittsburgh where I've stayed ever since. I expect to turn 60 in a few weeks, so it won't come as any surprise that the grade school and high school I attended are out of existence, too. I think that's one of the most confusing things about getting older. The major institutions of your life just up and disappear.

Working stiffs is a writers blog; you've probably noticed that a lot of contributors focus on writing-related topics. I tend to write free-form here on the theory that there's more to writing than grammar and story structure. Life experience informs the imagination. So I write about experiences that I feel have shaped my writing. Of course, as you regular readers know, I am a highly unsuccessful fiction writer, poet and screenwriter. No success to speak of, or should that be 'of which to speak'?

7 comments:

I agree about life experience -- As I like to say: "it's ALL novel material...."

For example, at a social event last week, someone told me about a doctor who won't take books out of the library because he's concerned they carry germs.. now isn't that a fabulous character trait to give to someone?

I used to work in a large public library, in a large city. That doctor is no fool.

Gina, if you mean you are unsuccessful in that you're not yet published, that may be one take. But your writing here does reach people; you share your thoughts and readers react. That's the purpose of art, in my book.

When I first sat down to write, my uncle told me, "Write what you know." It was after thinking about what I know that I realized my background is boring. Which is exactly why I don't bother with Twitter.

Jennie, look at it as learning to write that back-jacket copy for one of your exciting novels. 200 words, that's 16 words a day before I blog next.